Thoughts on outages

It was instructive to see people's responses (and continuing responses) to the Blogger outage.

Now, granted, my attitude is probably different in part from the standpoint that I do this as a hobby - for me, the blog is part lecture podium, part soapbox, part salon, and part pressure valve. I don't make any money off this and I'm happy that it's that way. (I will say, once in a while, I'll get an Amazon package sent by a reader, and I appreciate that very much, though I certainly do not expect it).

So maybe I'd feel differently if it were part of my business.

(I suppose it's also possible part of the extreme reactions were fear of "What if Blogger is gone forever?" I admit I considered that at first, but then decided, "Naaah, they're a HUGE company, they're part of the Google Empire, and it would be a giant PR black eye if they couldn't fix it." So I decided to just sit tight and wait.)

But I found it really...interesting? (I guess, I can't think of a better word) to see the OUTRAGE!!11!!!! that other people were expressing over Blogger being down.

Well, for one thing, it's a free service. (And even paid services can tank badly. My campus uses BlackBoard, which I understand is quite expensive, as course-management software, and there have been times where BlackBoard has tanked quite spectacularly. And Flickr- which can be free, but which I pay for more storage on, can go down). That's why I don't fully trust "the cloud" - unless I have a digital, or, better yet, print copy that is on actual storage medium that I can hold in my hand, I figure the file can be lost through no fault at all of my own.

(Yes. I still keep print copies of things that are vitally important to me. And I have multiple backups of things like teaching stuff - which is why I wasn't more freaked about the possibly-baked-hard-drive on my office computer. I did NOT have all the AAUW minutes backed up, but in my mind, those were less important (and any way, as it turned out, the president had an entire file of them. As I expected she would).)

And for another thing...well, it's blogging. Yes, I know, I love blogging and would really miss it (and would probably scramble to find some other way of hosting the blog and getting software for its mechanics) if Blogger went away. And I love reading blogs. But it's not the same thing as being able to get medicine. Or food. Or electricity. Or whatever.

As I said - it's not part of my business, I don't earn money off it. I tried to think of a comparable situation with teaching - if I had a teaching blog and needed to transmit something before the final exam, well, I'd probably have e-mail addresses of most, if not all of the students. Or I could send out e-mails to the ones whose addresses I knew and asked them to PLEASE try to get in touch with their peers if at all possible. Or just eliminate the last assignment from grading, if that was what got lost. I mean, if you think a little, you can come up with an acceptable solution to most problems. Or you just shrug and punt, because stuff has tanked.

(I guess I really have learned to be more flexible, over time. To roll with the punches better.)

I know, some people probably sell stuff over their blogs...but there are other things that can cause brick-and-mortar businesses to have to shut down, or otherwise adversely affect them. (I am thinking of the closure of part of First Street here for several weeks while they worked on an intersection - it was very hard, if not impossible, to get to businesses on that stretch).

But all that aside, I was blown away by the DEMANDS - the "why won't you TELL ME what is wrong and when you're going to fix it?!?!?!" Many, many messages to that regard. Also many messages on how terrible blogger was for this downtime. (Uh, yeah. Do they use Twitter? That service is lousy with downtime, it seems.)

And I find myself puzzled by that - after all, Blogger had posted some information (maybe not as much as I'd have liked, but whatever) and they had an announcement saying essentially, "We know there is a problem, we are working on it." It was almost as if the individuals writing the posts were personally offended that Blogger was down, and it was as if they felt it had been done specifically to inconvenience them.

And I don't know, my main reaction was "people need to get a GRIP." For one thing, the information that was going to be forthcoming was already out there, most non-programmers probably wouldn't get a technical explanation of what was wrong or what was being done, and anyway, the team doesn't have time to answer every single person's concerns individually.

I'm really not saying this to be an apologist for the system - there were things that could have been handled more intelligently (like: not having your status blog on the same system that was crashing. And also maybe trying to give some kind of estimated ETA, even if you overestimate it a little). But it just blows my mind how entitled and demanding some people can be.

I wonder, if perhaps, this is maybe a bit of a generational thing. I remember a librarian I know told me about Gen X vs. some Gen Y in the library - Gen X kids would come in and say to the librarian, "I need to look up something in the encyclopedia, please tell me where they are?" and she would point to them, and the person would go after what they needed. But she said some of the younger students she'd get coming in, they'd not just ask where the encyclopedias were, they'd also want to know which volume to look in, and how many pages the article was, and wasn't there a SIMPLER source they could use? I realize that's stereotyping and ageist but she seemed to think that the up and coming generations were more dependent and demanding than the older ones were.

Because I don't know... a lot of my colleagues, a lot of the people on Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks, talk about how some of the students they have (usually, but not exclusively, in the 18-22 age cohort) ask for or even expect things that the faculty member would never have even considered asking for as a student. (One of the big things that gets me? The student coming in wanting extra credit after the semester is over. I explain that I cannot ethically offer extra credit to one person and not the whole class (even if I WANTED to...I have a "no extra credit, don't expect it" line in my syllabi). And occasionally, the person will say to me, after my explanation, "Oh, but I won't TELL anyone if you do it for just me."

Um. So not the point. Allow me to define the word "ethical" to you.

But anyway. I'm glad Blogger is back and even if my Thursday post is gone forever, that's okay.